Corvids are considered extremely intelligent. For example, studies have shown that rooks are imaginative and gifted in languages, use tools, can remember human faces and plan ahead. So in these things they differ at best in degree from, just for example, the Free Voters. Of course they are at least on the ball. In the Bavarian state parliament, for example, they have just come up with something again, formulated an application and turned to their usual allies. As for future tool use, her plan is again a bit simplistic, but guns are handy and nothing else seems to help.
The protected rook should be declared a huntable species in Germany and should be allowed to be shot more easily. So the environment committee decided with a majority that Bavaria should now push this forward through the Bundesrat. Despite their talent for languages, the crows are not entitled to vote. Speaking of which: The animals are indeed songbirds, but their constant cawing is getting on the nerves of more and more people. Because the crows themselves are becoming more and more numerous and particularly like to set up their colonies where many people live.
In the fifties when she – it works! – were eagerly shot, there are said to have been only a few hundred breeding pairs. In 1977 they were placed under protection. According to the State Office for the Environment (LfU), there are now more than 14,000 breeding pairs, mainly in Swabia and western Upper Bavaria. Empty agricultural landscapes freed from all inefficiency drive them to nest and croak in the settlements, where there is always something to eat. However, they do not spurn food fresh from the field. Bavaria’s farmers reported damage totaling 107,235 euros to the LfU 2021. That would be about one euro per company, but the damage is distributed as unevenly as the crows.
However, crows can hardly be driven away effectively, neither by trained birds of prey nor by machines that imitate their warning calls or emit popping noises. They’re just too smart for that. So now it should really crack. So, should the Free Voters eventually prevail, some crows will perish of their own cunning. And the free voters have to get that far first.